Sunday, 18 December 2005

The snowman does not 'bring the snow'!!The very first line of your song - and therefore the premise on which it is all based - seems to express your belief that the events described therein occur 'when the snowman brings the snow'. He simply doesn't. Obviously he doesn't. How could he? Snowmen are only created when there is snow to build them with. So it follows that they cannot possibly 'bring the snow', because their very existence indicates the snow has already been brought, by person or persons unknown. Just think about it. You don't see front gardens full of snowmen, standing in the middle of otherwise green and snowless lawns, and think to yourself 'Aha! There must be a snowfall in the offing - the snowmen are out!' No, of course you don't. Ironically, had you said 'When the snow brings the snowman' then you would have at least been on the right lines, although I realise you'd have run into problems with scansion. But they would be your problems, Mr Wood, not mine.

Furthermore, you talk about 'the' snowman, as if there's only one. The only snowman who has ever claimed a definite article, so far as I am aware, is 'The Snowman' out of the Raymond Briggs cartoon of the same name, who definitely arrived after the snow; built from it by the ginger boy with Aled Jones' voice. Oh, and now I think about it, I suppose Frosty 'the' Snowman. But I have no evidence he claims to 'bring the snow'. And- and this is my point Mr Wood- I don't believe you have either. So, could you please arrange to have your intensely irritating song withdrawn from all the shops that play it twice an hour throughout December until this crucial 'Which came first - the snowman or the snow?' question is satisfactorily resolved.

10
comments:

Oh, John... you're so endearingly naive. Snow? The song is about cocaine. That's why the 'snow' man has "put a great big smile, on somebody's face", and why, as an addict, he wishes "it could be Christmas every day", "when the kids start singing and the band begins to play"... IN HIS COKED-UP HEAD!

Well, I admit it would explain a lot if the singer was smashed out of his mind. Especially the very odd bit variously interpreted on lyrics sites as being about 'frosticles' or 'frosty paws' which appear, and have frozen up either the singers' 'ears' or 'beard'.

On a small matter in your recent letter to Roy Wood; you correctly state that I built the snowman in Raymond Briggs' "The Snowman" and you also correctly describe me as ginger. Both of these things, as you yourself might say, are my problem.

However, you incorrectly allege that I have the voice of Aled Jones, and I feel it necessary to point out that in Briggs' cartoon the voice I have is that of treble Peter Auty. Aled Jones famously copied my song and had a chart-topping hit with it, but with his face, not mine. It may seem pedantic, but I would want it to be known that although I am ginger, I am most certainly not Welsh.

If the implication of the original short filmed introduction to "The Snowman" is to be believed, I also grew up to be David Bowie - so I am now a millionaire living in New York and happily married to the stunning model Iman. So there.

I know this is an old blog entry, but I came across it after Googling for the song.

Regarding the snowman controversy, I think it's actually "the Snow Man", as in a being that causes a snowfall, rather than a man who's built of snow after the snow has arrived. See it in that light, and there is no paradox in the song and it makes perfect sense.

And regarding the difference in lyrics...the original lyrics wre "frosticals" and "beard", but for some strange reason a cover version changed these to something different.

To any Cabin Pressure fans who, like me, are meandering through all these old blog posts and dying at the fact that John used several of these posts as the basis of Douglas and Martin's games; I'd just like to point out the label of this post: Get Dressed You Merry Gentlemen.